Deconstructive Criticism

---

---

Niles (David Hyde Pierce): Oh my God. It is T.H. Houghton. We're a stone's throw away from one of the giants of American literature.

Roz (Peri Gilpin): Not the way you throw.

---

I guess the character of reclusive writer T.H. Houghton (played by Robert Prosky) in the episode of Frasier that aired on this night in 1996 was kind of a cross between J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee. Like Lee (at the time), Houghton had published only one book — albeit an influential one that was a pillar of English lit classes everywhere — but Lee wasn't the recluse that Salinger was. Houghton combined the quirkiest of both.

Anyway, Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and Niles (David Hyde Pierce) had stopped at the cafe for some coffee before taking their father (John Mahoney) to buy new clothes. While sipping coffee outdoors, they spotted T.H. Houghton nearby.

And they began trying to meet him.

Their father, however, was the one who succeeded in getting to know the reclusive writer — without really trying. Frasier and Niles left him at a sports bar to watch the Mariners ("He's just dead weight," Niles told Frasier before they ran off on their quest), and it turned out Houghton was there, too. The boys didn't see him — he was probably in the bathroom because he walked into the room a minute or two after they left, sat down next to Martin and began watching the game with him.

They hit it off, talking about old TV shows and swapping war stories after the baseball game ended.

Meanwhile, after their fruitless search came to an end, Frasier and Niles returned to the sports bar — only to find their father sitting at a table with T.H. Houghton. But the writer didn't stay long; in fact, he left the bar as they were coming in, and the boys were left to wonder anew how they could finagle a meeting with him.

Later, after Niles and Frasier had been to an art exhibit, they returned to Frasier's apartment and crossed paths with their father and Houghton on their way out for dinner. Houghton had been there all afternoon. Another near miss.

Perhaps they could all spend some time together after the two returned from dinner, Niles suggested hopefully.

"I doubt it," Frasier replied. "They'll probably run into J.D. Salinger and Salman Rushdie and go out for margaritas."

The next day, Houghton was set to pick up Martin so they could go to a Mariners doubleheader. As Martin explained to the boys, Houghton was only in town for a few days to drop off his new book with his publisher.

Niles and Frasier nearly had strokes. A new Houghton book! In hindsight, their reaction reminds me a great deal of the reaction to Harper Lee's new book a year ago.

They didn't get to spend time with Houghton, but he went off without his satchel, which contained his manuscript, and Niles and Frasier took it out and read it while Houghton and their father were at the doubleheader.

But they didn't manage to return the manuscript to the satchel before being caught red–handed.

At first, Houghton was indignant about the invasion of his privacy. But soon curiosity got the best of him and he asked Niles and Frasier for their opinions. "Somebody had to read it first," he observed.

What happened next surprised everyone.

---

---

Niles and Frasier mentioned the similarities between Houghton's book and Dante's "Divine Comedy."

Houghton concluded that he had lifted the entire structure from Dante, and he interpreted that to mean that he nothing original left to say. "I was a fool to think I had a second book in me," he said before throwing the manuscript off Frasier's balcony.

Then he thanked Niles and Frasier and told them that if the book had been published, his reputation would have been destroyed. This way, he was left with a shred of dignity, and he marched with head held high — and a sheet from the manuscript stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes — out of the apartment.

I always liked this episode because, as a writer, I know that writing is not the kind of occupation for someone who is thin–skinned. Writers will always encounter criticism, no matter how good they are. They have to accept it as a fact of the life they have chosen. In a way, I guess, it is like being a politician. Even our greatest presidents had their critics.

In this episode, the shoe was kind of on the other foot. Frasier was a thin–skinned sort, too. In an episode in the previous season, he got all bent out of shape because one member of a 12–person focus group didn't like him. This time someone else was dealing with negative thoughts.

Well, that's life. No matter how funny or smart or good–looking you are, there will always be those who don't like you or what you do — or something. Always.

J.D. Salinger Dies

Given his reclusive nature, perhaps it was appropriate that writer J.D. Salinger died yesterday — and word of his death didn't get out until today.

He was an enigma to many and for good reason.

As a teenager, I read his iconic novel, "The Catcher in the Rye," which was published nearly 60 years ago. It still had a lot to say to people who were in the grip of the alienation and rebellion that are hallmarks of that age, and it helped me to realize that what I was experiencing at that stage of my life was precisely what other generations had faced and what future generations would face.

Salinger reassured me that I certainly wasn't the first — nor would I be the last — to have those feelings.

In December 1980, when ex–Beatle John Lennon was murdered by a twisted fan who had a copy of the book in his possession — and, apparently, had modeled himself after the narrator/protagonist of the book, Holden Caulfield — I retrieved my dog–eared copy of the book from my bookshelf and read it again, hoping to find some clue that might explain what had happened.

I never found what I was looking for — although I did gain a fresh appreciation and my respect was renewed for Salinger's work.

Salinger was 91. His birthday was nearly four weeks ago, on January 1. He broke his hip last May, but, according to his literary agent, he had been doing fine "until a rather sudden decline after the new year."

I guess those things are bound to happen when one has reached an advanced age.

We may never know the reason for the "rather sudden decline" in his health. But, today, I — and, no doubt, many who read and appreciated his works over the years — can't help wondering if there are manuscripts of his that will be published posthumously. Time will tell.

For now, rest in peace, Mr. Salinger.

A Literary Double Reverse

I have written of my admiration for Mark Twain at my Freedom Writing blog.

Actually, my fondness for Twain's works goes back a long way. Among my readers are people with whom I grew up, and most of them certainly could tell you of times when I urged them to read Twain.

I read a lot of Twain when I was in high school and college. Sometimes it was an assignment. Sometimes it was something I did on my own. But, whether I was assigned to do it or I did it on my own initiative, I can't think of anything I ever read by Twain that I haven't (a) quoted directly, (b) mentioned generally in a conversation, (c) recommended to people, (d) cited in an article or term paper or (e) some or all of the above.

One book that I continue to recommend to people many years after reading it for the first time — even though, in recent years, it has been sacrificed in many places to the gods of political correctness — is "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

If you're a writer, you have probably dreamed of writing the Great American Novel. In my experience, the Great American Novel almost never comes along. But "Huckleberry Finn" is an exception to that rule. It has been called the Great American Novel by many people — and with good reason.

"Huckleberry Finn" was first published 125 years ago last month. But, as good as it is and as deserving of some attention, today I want to turn my attention to one of Twain's novels that was published a few years earlier, was decidedly not an American tale and may have been recreated in movies and recordings or served as the inspiration for other people's works as much as — if not more than — anything else Twain ever wrote.

I am speaking of "The Prince and the Pauper," which was, as nearly as I can tell, Twain's first foray into historical fiction. It dealt with two boys who were almost identical in spite of the fact that they had different parents. One of the boys was named Edward, and he happened to be the prince of Wales. The other boy was named Tom, and he was from a poor family.

The boys were born the same day but never knew of each other's existence until just before Edward's father, King Henry VIII, died, when fate brought them together. In the book, the two agreed to switch places temporarily, and, in the process, they discovered the pitfalls in each other's lives.

It was truly a daring subject for Twain to tackle in his first real attempt to write historical fiction. Much of the time, when one reads historical fiction, the characters are fictional, too. They may combine qualities of real people, but you seldom read historical novels in which a main character was a real person from history.

But that was what set "The Prince and the Pauper" apart from other works of historical fiction because this story dealt with an actual figure from more than three centuries earlier — Edward VI. And the historical record tells us that he became king of England on Jan. 28, 1547. His father had just died, and Edward was 9 years old. Nearly a month would pass before he was crowned at Westminster Abbey, which was not unusual, but, for all intents and purposes, he became king 463 years ago tomorrow.

Always a sickly boy, Edward died less than 6½ years after becoming king and was succeeded by his older sisters, Lady Jane Grey and Mary I. That is the historical record.

In the book, Twain wrote that Edward's experiences living in poverty and suffering at the hand of Tom's abusive father affected him. He pledged to govern wisely when restored to his rightful place, but that can be classified as literary speculation. Edward died before reaching the age of maturity; he was king in name, but in actual deed his reign was overseen by executors who had been named in his father's will.

We will never know if he would have ruled more mercifully than his predecessors, including his father, because — to my knowledge — he was never allowed to make any royal decisions.

Twain was always finding ways to work his real–world interests into his fictional works. He had a genuine fascination with science, and he combined that with his desire to write historical fiction when he wrote about time travel in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" several years later.

"The Prince and the Pauper" is a classic, and it has led to not only more than half a dozen film and TV adaptations but also countless stories that must have been inspired by Twain's original tale.

It seems like such an obvious theme, doesn't it? How many times have you seen a movie or an episode of a TV show where the story was based on the notion that two people looked alike? Perhaps someone wrote such a story before Twain came along, but I have to think he originated it. Even if the stories that served as the foundation for some movies or TV shows are said to have been inspired by something else, I still have to think that Twain played a role.

"The Parent Trap," for example, was based on a book that was published nearly 40 years after Twain died. In that story, the two people who looked the same were twins who went with a different biological parent when their parents divorced. I can't help wondering if Erich Kästner, the author of the book that inspired that movie, wasn't, in turn, influenced by Twain, who wrote "The Prince and the Pauper" nearly 20 years before Kästner was born.

Likewise, I wonder if Twain was at the heart of the inspiration for the movie "Dave," in which Kevin Kline plays both the president and a man who earns some money impersonating him. When the president is incapacitated, his unscrupulous chief of staff gets the impersonator to step in and pretend to be the president, giving the chief of staff the opportunity to wield the actual power from behind the scenes.

That story, it was said, was inspired by Anthony Hope's "The Prisoner of Zenda." Hope was closer to Twain's age. He was born about 28 years after Twain, and he wrote his book about 13 years after Twain wrote "The Prince and the Pauper."

It seems plausible to me that Hope's tale of a political decoy could have been inspired by Twain's story. But I have seen nothing to confirm that.

I don't know if either of those books were influenced by "The Prince and the Pauper." But it makes sense, doesn't it?

Even if the authors didn't realize it themselves, it makes sense.

The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe

---

"Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream."

Edgar Allan Poe
"A Dream Within A Dream" (1849)

---

He is best remembered as the author of mysterious and macabre stories.

I remember becoming interested in his works when, as a teenager, I heard a recording by The Alan Parsons Project playing in a record store.

The album consisted entirely of songs that were inspired by his writings. It was called "Tales of Mystery and Imagination."

It fascinated me. It was the store's featured new release and, as such, was being played repeatedly for all the patrons to hear. At the front of the store, the album's cover was displayed beneath a sign that said, "Now playing."

I don't know how many people were persuaded to purchase that album by that kind of exposure and sales technique, but it worked on me. I bought it that day, having read nothing about it beforehand and having heard only a couple of songs while browsing in the store.

I marveled then, as I do now, at the mind that could compose poems and stories capable of inspiring such musical composition.

Even today, more than 30 years later, I am dazzled by the musicianship of the early incarnation of the group that was put together by a mostly unheralded engineer who worked on the Beatles' "Abbey Road" and Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon."

Edgar Allan Poe's death, which remains shrouded in mystery nearly 160 years later, also fascinated me — and still does.

On Oct. 3, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found wandering the streets of Baltimore. Poe was delirious, according to the man who found him. He was "in great distress, and ... in need of immediate assistance."

He was taken to a hospital, where he died four days later, never having been lucid long enough to explain what had happened — or why he was wearing clothes that did not belong to him when he was found.

All of Poe's medical records have been lost. Newspaper accounts of the day reported his death but used code words to imply that alcoholism was the cause of death.

Alcohol may or may not have caused Poe's death. Clearly, he struggled with alcohol during his life, but various reports over the years have indicated that it may not have caused his death at the age of 40. He may have been a victim of heart disease, cholera, epilepsy or rabies.

Like the death of Mozart at 35, of which I wrote the other day, Poe's death probably will remain unsolved.

But, as it was with Salieri in the death of Mozart, there does appear to be a plausible suspect in Poe's death.

A fellow named Rufus Griswold, who was a contemporary editor and critic, apparently was one of Poe's adversaries who also apparently tried to smear Poe after his death.

The effort was temporarily successful — until the sources for Griswold's assertions were discredited and the allegations were exposed as lies or distortions.

Poe's reputation was restored — but the cause of his death remains undetermined.